Chapter Sixteen
Prince Arthur
Some music thing at Westminster Abbey followed by a charity brunch at Claridges today. Massive bore. Not my scene but right up my family's alley so I had to show my face.
Carter Holland here’s for the brunch, though. Made for a bit of a mix up. Funny fucker, spit of Connie. Haven’t seen him since he was about ten.
“Have you ever done meth?” He asks me.
“No.”
“Why not? Heard it’s alright.”
Shake my head, frown a bit. “Not my thing…?”
“Acid?”
“No—actually, maybe once.”
He slaps the table, claps. “No fucking way!”
“Shut up, Carter,” Connie tuts, walking over to our table.
Carter drops his smile, leans in, lips twitching. “One more question?”
I smile, quite enjoying this. “Go on.”
“Did it ever cross your mind that it was your grandad's face on the notes you were using to rack up?”
Connie laughs next to me.
“You’re a little shit,” I tell his younger brother.
“The fucking disrespect!” He shakes his head, loving every minute of this. “Our future king—tripping balls on acid. That’s gotta be a first, ain’t it? Like, in all of history?”
I shrug. “Probably.”
Carter points to his brother then nods his chin towards me. “Some people call him a prick, I call him a legend.”
I’m laughing but I’m not sure at what, the fact that after all these years spent in the most prestigious boarding school in Switzerland he’s talking like he’s fresh off the set of Eastenders with a slight French twinge or just how similar he is to my best friend.
Connie fake laughs, his face dropping seconds later. He clips his brother round the back of his head and tells him to fuck off.
“You do know he’s cracking on with your sister, don’t you?” Connie frowns.
I pull a face. “No he ain’t.”
He holds his hands up, “Mums—he fucking is.”
I roll my eyes. “You can’t swear on your mum’s life if she’s dead.”
“Oh my god,” he mutters. “Stepmum’s life, then.”
“No offence, mate, but Ev wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot pole.”
Connie sips his gin and tonic, raises his eyebrows. “I think she would.”
“She’s not, so—”
He nudges me. “Imagine us, brothers?”
“That would never happen.”
“Would I get a title? I well wanna be a Lord.”
“No.”
“Could you make that happen, though?”
“No.”
“For me?”
“Fuck off.”
Connie smiles, sighs, twists around in his chair so he’s facing the crowd. Leans back, rests his arm on the table. “You and Phoebs have another falling out or something?”
I frown, my head spinning around to immediately seek her out. “No. Why would you say that?”
“Because you haven’t spoken more than two words to her. Bit unusual for the both of you.”
I find her, near the table where her parents and Cynthia are sitting. Digby’s got his arm around her shoulder—looks uncomfortable with it. Maybe he’s holding her too tightly? She looks like she’s struggling to breathe? Haven’t spoken to her since that night in Oxford.
Ruined me a bit, that night.
Meant every word, though,
I’ll be waiting for her with open arms in my grave.
Even if seeing her with Digby kills me bit by bit, I’ll still be here.
I’m not leaving again. Even if I relapsed, went all the way back there, I wouldn’t leave because I know that’d wreck her more.
All Phoebe wants is for me to be here—alive, dead, in love with her, not in love with her, with someone else, sleeping about—she doesn’t care in what capacity.
She just wants to be able to find my eyes in a crowd of people she doesn’t know.
Which is exactly what she’s doing right now. Her mirrorball eyes are locked on mine from across the room. She speaks to me in a language no one else will ever be able to learn. She’s sorry. She’s annoyed with Digby. She wants to be sitting here. She’s bored.
I don’t know what happened between that night and now.
We woke up that morning, entangled together the way our hearts are, to the sound of her phone ringing.
She was really panicked. Digby had been calling her non stop for about two hours.
She picked up, phone tucked between her shoulder and ear as she danced around to get her clothes on.
Left a few minutes later.
Haven’t spoken since.
They fought, undoubtedly.
Hate to think about how that went down.
Digby’s the type. Not to hit her, no—but he’d get close, I reckon.
Hit the wall above her head, watch her flinch.
Watch as she cries so he can feel like a man.
Maybe it’s a societal thing—it honestly can be in some cases—he knows she ranks higher than him in near enough all aspects. He hates that. He’s the man.
He has the look about him, too. That fucking smug look that just makes you want to punch him. I was on the fence about him from day one but as time ticks on, I’ve pretty much made up my mind. I hate him and given the chance, I would punch him, yeah.
I stand up, adjust my tie, clear my throat, sort of twitch my head over to the right in hopes that she clocks on.
I stand in the foyer, wait a couple minutes for her.
She knows me.
She’d know that was me telling her to follow me.
She comes through the doors a second later, stands there, in front of me, absolutely nothing behind her eyes.
“Are you okay?” I reach for her wrist but she pulls back.
“I’m fine.”
“You need to stop lying to me.”
She laughs. Flat. Nothing there. “I’m not.”
“We haven’t spoken in a week.”
“What was there to say?”
“A lot.”
She shakes her head, eyes to the ceiling. “Not really.”
I grind my teeth.
“Your boyfriend know we were in the same bed, partially naked?”
She folds her lips, crosses her arms over her chest. Blinks a couple times, swallows, breathing in and out deeply—all the signs someone’s about to burst into tears. Phoebe sniffs, composes herself.
”Can I ask you something, Arthur?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you ever want help? When we were back in school?”
I frown, almost laugh. “Where’s this coming from?”
I don’t say yes nor do I say no because I’m not sure which answer would hurt her more.
“If you don’t start telling me the truth, Arthur, me and you will never work again. If you carry on lying to me, you’ll be the one sitting in the church, watching my dad give me away to Digby.”
Her words knock me for six. I stand there, a bit…dumbfounded, I think?
“You’re considering marrying that absolute div?”
I laugh, quickly covering it with a cough when her face doesn’t waver. She’s serious—she’s fucking serious about marrying him.
My heart beats the same way it does when you’re about to be sick.
My stomach completely bottoms out and for a second I think I actually might be.
It’s that feeling—worst feeling in the world—this dread that just hits you from nowhere.
Like you’re walking by a skyscraper and out of nowhere a fucking brick falls from the sky.
I swallow although my mouth is drier than the Sahara.
“Has he proposed to you?”
Makes sense. Maybe? I don’t want it to but it does.
Phoebe licks her top lip, mouth parted. I think she’s going to say yes. What then?
“No, he hasn’t.”
My eyebrows dip, relief floods me. I reach out for her—almost pleading with my hand for her to let me hold her in some way—fuck that, I am pleading, begging, on my knees. I’d crawl out of my grave to get to her. In fact, there’s not a lot I wouldn’t do for her.
That should scare me but it doesn’t. It’s a comfort if anything.
She throws me a life vest, lets me take her wrist in my hand.
“Are you clean, Arthur?”
“You know I am.”
Whatever comes out of my mouth now aren’t just words. They’re a prayer, a pledge, a promise, a beg—whatever it takes to get her to stay.
“From everything?”
“Yes.”
“Alcohol?”
“Haven’t had a drop.”
“You went for a pint with Connie the other day.”
“Come on, Phoebs,” I shake my head. “I didn’t even finish it. It’s the first kind of drug I’ve had in over two years and I didn’t even like it!”
“See!” She cries. “ You couldn’t even resist the temptation!”
“It wasn’t like that. Alcohol was never an issue for me.”
I’m telling the truth. Connie dragged me to the pub to have a drink with Carter. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t even order the drink, Carter got the first round, didn’t even think about it. I had two sips and then didn’t even look twice at it. Never liked beer. Never even liked alcohol that much.
“You were always drunk, Arthur.”
She tilts her head, tears rolling down her face as she pleads for me to give her a reasonable answer, one she can tolerate and justify.
“No I wasn’t—I was high. Everytime you thought I was drunk, I was high.
I got drunk the odd few times at a party.
Every time you thought I was high from smoking weed, I wasn’t.
I hadn’t been sober for longer than two weeks since I was thirteen.
If I wanted to, I could allow myself a drink every now and then because that was never the issue—fair enough if Connie asked me to call it in, that’d be different because I probably wouldn’t be able to say no to that. ”
“But every time you got drunk, you then went and got high.”
“That was just an excuse I allowed myself. It was harder to explain in my head when I got high without being drunk.”
She takes in a deep breath, mascara smudging her cheeks.
She’s a mess and I want nothing more than to clear it all up for her.
I’ll always be an addict and the temptation will always be there so fair enough if she can’t trust me—I’m not asking her to trust me.
All I want is for her to stay—even if that means she’s here and hates the sight of me. I’ll take that.
Her voice cracks, she brushes a hand against her face, glances to the right. “Was I really that naive?”
I shake my head rapidly, reach for her other hand. “It wasn’t your place to notice and it wasn’t your job to fix me, Phoebes.”
“You was my boyfriend,” she whispers and I never thought a past tense word would hurt me the way it just did. “You were with me more than you were with anyone else. I should’ve known.”
“We were kids.”